Kakao Establishes Group Story IP Division... Accelerating 'Beyond Korea'

Kakao has established a new organization related to story intellectual property (IP) within the CA Council, the group's control tower. This is interpreted as a strategy to link IP businesses among group companies such as Kakao Entertainment and Kakao Piccoma to target overseas markets.

According to the IT industry on the 2nd, Kakao recently set up a Story IP Subcommittee under the CA Council Strategy Committee.

The Story IP Subcommittee is an organization aimed at strengthening synergy related to content IP such as webtoons among affiliated companies. It is reported that personnel from webtoon business affiliates such as Kakao Entertainment have been assigned to the Story IP Subcommittee.

The establishment of the Story IP Subcommittee is a strategy to actively pursue the global IP market by linking affiliates engaged in content businesses such as Kakao Entertainment and Kakao Piccoma.

Kim Beom-su, co-chairman of the CA Council and founder of Kakao, announced the 'Beyond Korea' vision in March 2022 to increase the overseas sales ratio from about 20% to over 30% by 2025.

As part of this, Kakao attempted to acquire SM Entertainment, which has a high overseas sales ratio, and expand its business, but progress was slow due to allegations of market manipulation related to the acquisition and ongoing prosecution investigations.

Accordingly, Kakao plans to create synergy by linking the IP businesses of affiliates related to webtoons and web novels. Kakao Entertainment, which provides webtoons and web novels through Kakao Webtoon and Kakao Page in Korea, is expanding its IP business with Tapas Entertainment in North America and country-specific platforms in Southeast Asia. Kakao Piccoma operates webtoon businesses in Japan and France. Last year, it ranked as the comic app operator with the highest consumer spending worldwide, with annual consumer spending of $870 million (approximately 1.1411 trillion KRW), continuing its growth overseas.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.